Ranking Every National Team in World Football After the World Cup Group Stage

For the first time in this World Cup, there's a day without football, giving everyone a chance to catch their breath and recollect on this whirlwind tournament.

While some nations are flying into unexpected berths in the knockout phase of the tournament, others have already boarded flights home after a disappointing three matches.

Since this is the biggest and most important tournament in international football, the ramifications of the past two weeks of action are obviously far-reaching, with some managers already departing and leaving their nation in a state of transition.

So where do all of the national teams stand after the group stage of the 2014 World Cup?

Methodology

For those of you who are new to these rankings and this system, let's break down the mathematical process that goes into it.

To begin with, every match from the last four years is assigned a value based on its importance. For example, the World Cup final is given much more weight than a random friendly.

The four-year window seems to be the perfect amount of time—a shorter period gives too small a sample size and a larger one would likely represent a different side.

After every match is given a value and compiled, each team is assigned a score for every match based on four factors:

The result of the match

Whether the match was home, away or at a neutral venue

How strong the opposition was

How recently the match was played

Finally, factoring in any matches a team missed out on (i.e. matches at World Cups they didn't qualify for) and giving every continental tournament a new weight produces a score out of 1,000 points.

Every team is then ranked based on these points.

One should note that this does not produce a ranking based on form alone.

As a result, many teams may seem higher or lower in the rankings than one might expect because of drastic changes in form over relatively short periods of time.

For example, performing well over a year may push a team up the table quickly, but relatively awful performances over the three years prior could hold the team back.

Hence, it allows a ranking that factors in both form and consistency, a quality that is highly undervalued.

What's more, some obvious issues come into play with this round of rankings, what with some teams heading into the knockout stages. While these teams do get a bit of a boost, it's not as much as they will get when they actually finish the tournament.

Plus, the knockout stages from the 2010 World Cup still happened within the past four years and are therefore included in these rankings, helping some teams that are already heading home from Brazil. In the next few weeks, that factor will disappear and truly impact upon them.

Thus, one should not look at these rankings as a tool for predicting the results of the knockout stages, but rather a measure of the class each side has shown over their most recent cycle.

There was a fair bit of movement in this group of teams, most of which was caused by the five nations in it that took part in the World Cup in Brazil.

Honduras had a fairly low ranking coming into the tournament, so their ranking did not drop drastically despite their atrocious performances and zero-point finish.

Australia, on the other hand, had a decent ranking before going out in their group with zero points, but their ranking didn't suffer too badly given the incredibly difficult group they were drawn into.

Even though Iran barely scored throughout the tournament, they fell just one spot, aided by their draw with eventual group runners-up Nigeria.

South Korea were the real disappointment in this group, picking up just one point in what looked on paper to be an easy group.

Their conquerors, Algeria, pull up the rear for the teams entering the round of 16. While the Desert Foxes were tipped to have already been eliminated, they earned four points to progress out of their group.

Algeria has already seen a big rise in the rankings and will surely see another when they finally finish this campaign, especially if they can pick up another victory along the way.

Not surprisingly, the biggest upward movers in this set of teams are Costa Rica and Nigeria.

Not many people fancied Costa Rica to get out of its group with three former world champions, but the Central American country played fantastically and finished top of Group D on seven points.

Meanwhile, Nigeria was able to grit out a tough victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina (maybe with a little help from the referee) to all but book its place in the last 16.

On the other side, it may seem harsh that Mexico and the USA barely moved up at all after getting through and thriving in particularly difficult groups (especially in the USA's case). Though the two nations got out of their respective groups four years ago, it was done so via wins they just lost due to the four-year window.

Good performances in their round of 16 matches, coupled with other nations losing their knockout wins from South Africa, should see them rise quickly in the coming weeks.

While a few nations that were already sent home from Brazil are resting on past accomplishments to remain in this group, the upper end of this set of teams is filled with talent that are posing massive threats in the knockout stage.

Colombia were arguably the best side in the group stage, winning all three matches and looking good doing so.

France left the terrible memory of 2010 behind and decimated Honduras and Switzerland in its first two matches before taking it easy in its third.

Uruguay was able to get past England and Italy to make it out of a tough group, but they face questions with the loss of Luis Suarez.

Belgium wasn't exactly thrilling in its first three matches, but they still picked up a hat-trick of wins.

A few good turns for any of those teams and they will surely give any nation a run for its money.

A little bit lower, there is Greece, a team that somehow keeps scraping by. For the second consecutive major tournament, the Greeks got an improbable win in their final match to make it to the knockout stage. If one does not enjoy watching their matches, they should at least appreciate Greece's consistency.

As for Chile, a team tipped as a dark horse coming into the tournament, the South Americans picked up a major scalp when they beat and knocked out defending champions Spain. However, they looked pedestrian against Netherlands, raising questions heading into an extremely difficult battle with hosts Brazil in the round of 16.